CreelcardPro released!

After some more hard work, we launched our very first paid app onto the Google Market a couple of weeks ago. We hope you appreciate some of the new functionality we added, mostly as a result of feedback from our users. The key new feature is the ability to export data to a series of csv files so you can import the information into other desktop applications for further analysis.

The layout of the csv files are fairly easy to understand. There is one file generated for each main record type in Creelcard. For example, the catch csv file references the ID of other records (e.g. fish, angler), which you will find listed in their respective csv files. Each csv file also includes any custom fields you may have defined for that record type, making this completely flexible.

We would be very interested to hear back from anyone who starts using these files for further analysis ... what kind of reporting and number crunching do you do ? We may add some analysis tools in the Pro version in the future; it would be great to know what kind of stats are the most useful.

Enjoy using the new Pro version! Please let us know your thoughts, experiences , questions and queries.

CreelCardPro ... coming soon!

Now that the free, ad-supported CreelCard application has been out in the market for a few months now, we have had some great feedback from some of the user community which we have been able to address and add back into the feature set. However, it was always our idea to launch a paid-for, no-ads version alongside the original free app, to test the waters for this kind of offering in the Android Marketplace.

Since the last version, v0.9.3, of the free version, we have been working on the pro version. We don't want to spoil all of the surprises, but the main theme is import and export of your fishing data. You will be able to import all the data from a previously - installed CreelCard free version when you first launch the Pro version. You will also be able export the entire data set out for CreelCard Pro into a series of individual csv text files (one file for trip, one files for catches, one file for fish etc). This will let you pull the data into other analysis packages and databases to do further reporting and archiving. This is working just great in our test version, including all custom fields, media file links and text notes for each record type.

We will continue to maintain the codebase of the free version, focusing on addressing any issues that may arise with new versions of the Android firmware, differences between different vendor-specific application stacks etc. For example, we have found a difference in the way the original Google Camera activity and the HTC Hero's HTCCamera activity create links to newly created photos that are passed back to the calling application (CreelCard in this case). Fortunately, a friend has lent his brand new HTC Hero phone to help with the problem diagnosis (thanks Sess!).

Look forward to providing more details when we are go for launch. Please don't hesitate to contact us with any ideas and feedback ... using our Get Satisfaction site is probably the best route. Thanks for your continuing support!

v0.9.3 released

Today we released Creelcard for Android v0.9.3, with the major addition of custom fields to let you define your own trip and catch attributes. In fact, you can add custom fields to any Creelcard record type (trip, catch, angler, bait, fish, location).

You can decide where each custom field should appear amongst the existing, fixed record fields. You can specify the visible field label, and even the hint text to remind you what to use each field for.

The following custom field types are supported in this version:
1. Text
2. Number (e.g. "30")
3. Number with fractions (e.g. "3.5")
4. CheckBox (true or false)
5. Length with small units (centimeters or inches)

For the first three types, you can either have a simple entry field to type in your value, or specify a lookup list of values (e.g. "Catch,Sighting,Missed"). Instead of typing in a value, you simply pick a value from the list, speeding up entry time.

We'd love to hear any feedback you have on further field types you'd like to see added next (e.g. speed, temperature - based fields?). Or is there anything else you love or would like to see improved with Creelcard? Let us know!

Wikitude Augmented Reality

What's the most likely killer app for smartphones once everyone has got used to the basic web / maps offerings? I reckon it's going to augmented reality; overlaying data information on a realtime view of the world (e.g overlaying data on the Camera view of an Android device).

Having gotten Google maps and gps sorted out for Creelcard, so that you can specify and view detailed catch position info, what's the next logical jump? How about being able to hold the phone up and see an overlay of the catch location and other data overlayed directly on the realtime camera view ahead of you? Interested ?

After reading a post on AndroidGuys about the new Wikitude Augmented Reality browser and developer API, I contacted the Wikitude dev team and got access to the private beta of their SDK.

The documentation was very clear; the library JAR file easy to add to the code base of the creelcard code project in Eclipse. Within 30 minutes I had added a simple Button View to the Creelcard catch list screen that launched the WikitudeCam screen. Then it took another couple of hours to figure out how to capture altitude info from Android's location API. The Wikitude browser is altitude - aware as well as latitude/longitude; set a point-of-interest (POI in wikitude-speak) on the top of a mountain, and you would have to point the camera up at the summit from the mountain's base to see the overlayed information - very cool! A final hours work to be able to pass a list of catch information as individual POIs, and I had a working basic Creelcard AR screen!

Unfortunately I can't release a version of creelcard with this functionality yet as the SDK is still is in an initial private beta phase. I have to say that the Wikitude team have been very responsive with the few questions I have had to ask to get this far. I really need to do some real - world testing to figure out how best to make use of this promising technology. Am also waiting for the commercial terms & conditions to be published before making a final decision. It would be great to hear from any readers of this blog as to your thoughts on how you could see AR helping your fishing experience !!

v0.9.2.1 released this evening with a couple of bug fixes that slipped through the net. You should be able to use the app without having any location providers (wireless and GPS) activated on your phone without it crashing! It is very important that Creelcard can be used out in the field without having the benefits of internet access or even location providers. Of course, if you can find a fishing spot with wifi or 3G access, so much the better ... use the View Maps button on the Catch List screen to see your current phone location in relation to catches from a previous trip.

v0.9.2 released with Maps & GPS support

The obvious next step for Creelcard had to be using some of the great location and map features of the Android platform. After some long hours getting my head round the unfamiliar Location and Maps APIs, helped by some great tutorials, we have just released the next version with some cool new geo features.

You can now specify the position of a Location record (e.g. a fishery, lake or riverside) and / or individual catches by either using your current phone GPS location, manually selecting from a map, or simply by typing in the co-ordinates yourself. For when the catch position is not known exactly, you can also define the approximate circular area in which the catch happened by resizing the area circle overlayed on the map. We will use this feature in future updates (setting proximity alerts, suggesting nearest "favourite" catch locations etc).

Please let us know how you would like to see Creelcard's features improve .. we would really appreciate any feedback. You can contact us by email (support (at) creelcard (dot) com), using our Get Satisfaction site, or by leaving comments on this blog.

More soon!

Returning data from an Android Activity called from startActivityWithResult

I spent hours scratching my head in various disguises, until I finally found this email thread. Basically, the results set in the Activity.setResult() method is fixed and transmitted back to the calling Activity when the child Activity's finish() method is called. Using setResult in onPause is too late .. the child activity will already be going through a finish action (e.g. on a Back button press). What happens is that the parent Acticvity onActivityResult gets a callback with ResultCode? = 0 (RESULT_CANCELLED) and the intent data is always null. Argh!

The answer is to override the child Activity's finish() method, to ensure that the setResult is called before the super.finish() method is called.

    @Override 
    public void finish() { 

     if (doSaveOnPause()) {
      if (save()) {
             // Set the insert / edit action result to OK
                mSuccessfullySaved = true;
                
      }
     } 

        if(mSuccessfullySaved) {
                // Notify the caller Activity that the user successfully 
                // edited or inserted the data set 
            Intent _intent = new Intent("inline-data").setData(mUri);

            Log.d(TAG,"Completing, with result="+RESULT_OK+", data="+_intent.getData().toString());

            setResult(RESULT_OK,_intent);
        }
        else {
                // Notify the caller Activity that the user has canceled the activity 
                // without altering anything 
             Log.d(TAG,"Completing, with result="+RESULT_CANCELED);
                setResult(Activity.RESULT_CANCELED); 
        }
        // Prevent onPause to re-save the record again during the close down of the activity.
        mSuccessfullySaved = false;

        super.finish(); 
    
            
    } 

Welcome to Creelcard

Welcome to Creelcard.com, the home of the Creelcard leisure fishing trip organiser and diary application for Android.

We launched the first v0.9.0 version with basic record keeping functionality to get the ball rolling, but we have many more features in the pipeline to really utilise the capabilities of Android and the internet. More on this very soon!

Please email us, post comments on this blog, or use the excellent GetSatisfaction site to contact us and the Creelcard user community to suggest how we can improve and enhance the application and service.